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Charter Accidentally Wipes 14K Email Accounts
dacut writes with the sad news that Charter Communications, which provides cable and Internet access to 2.6 million customers, accidentally and irretrievably wiped out 14,000 active email accounts while trying to clear out unused accounts. They're providing a $50 credit to each affected customer, which seems a paltry sum for anyone who was less than diligent about backing up their email — though those who relied on Charter's webmail interface had no easy way to accomplish backups. From the article: "There is no way to retrieve the messages, photos and other attachments that were erased from inboxes and archive folders across the country on Monday, said Anita Lamont, a spokeswoman for the suburban St. Louis-based company. 'We really are sincerely sorry for having had this happen and do apologize to all those folks who were affected by the error,' Lamont said Thursday when the company announced the gaffe."
You just know this must be related to the story IT: You Used Perl to Write WHAT?! from earlier this morning...
Trolling is a art,
Did they send an email to notify people of the $50 rebate? My inbox is empty...
Crap! UNDELETE UNDELETE!!!!!
Charter Manager: You sure that these are the correct accounts to nuke.
Charter Employee: Yessiree ! 'Click'
Charter Employee: Oh shit.
Charter Manager: What ?
Charter Employee: 'Surfs over to Monster.com' Oh nothing. Nothing at all.
Guns are for wimps... Use a crossbow.. this way you can pin them to their chair when you go postal.
Somewhere deep in the bowels of a server room at 2:14 am...
clickety clickety (SIGH) clickety (beep)
clickety clickety (beep)
clickety (beep)
clickety clickety (beep)
click- OHHHH SH**! F***!
stuff |
...I actually trust Google with my email. I wouldn't mind them providing a proper backup mechanism...
There's always Google paper...
the customers could always write to the NSA and ask for their backups.
Your statement about people complaining about the trash(deleted email) being emptied brought back a fond memory of mine. I was early in my IT Admin career (was a programmer for over 10 prior to that), I was working for a major insurance company administrating their CC:Mail network. We had issues of people never emptying their "trash" folder and it was taking a long time to do anything for everyone on the system. We sent out a memo to the entire company telling them that in a week we would start emptying the trash folder nightly around midnight before the backups and other maintenance begins. very few people bothered to pay attention to this memo.
Here is where it get...funny. A high-muckety-muck (eg: pointy haired VP) called the help desk screaming for his trash folder to be restored as it was emptied without his permission and had important files in there. He wanted to see the guilty parties in his office post-haste. I was part of the team, so I had to go to his office. while waiting outside his door for him to let our team in, I grabbed a trashcan and some vertical file folders and paper from his secretary. (can you see where I'm going yet?) We were let in, and he proceeded to rip us up one side and down the other. Our manager brought a copy of the memo, which he promptly threw away while continuing to yell.
I asked to speak (everyone else was quietly taking the heat) and proceeded to put the trash can on the desk, put the vertical file folders in the trashcan and put paper in each folder. While I was explaining this analogy to him, I asked if every day his office trashcan was empty when he came into the office. He said yes. I basically gave him the analogy that the trash folder in cc:mail was the same as his office trashcan - whatever went in during the day was retrievable, but at midnight, the office cleaning crew would come in and empty his trashcan and we also would be emptying his electronic trash folder the same way. He blinked, and understood what we were doing, pulled the memo out of the trash and reread it. we were dismissed with no apology back to our offices.
Note that I was a contractor - I couldn't be fired...just sent away back to my firm to go on to the next assignment. I ended up being there for 2.5 years. I still laugh at that situation even today.
Just because I can, I did a couple of bar-napkin type calculations to see what it would take to protect this environment.
Dude, that wasn't a "bar-napkin type calculation"... You used the whole tablecloth!
Life is short; think quickly.
*THAT*'s why they won't let me back in that bar...
-- "Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?"